Vibrating flow meters, such as for example, vibrating densitometers and Coriolis flow meters are generally known and are used to measure mass flow and other information for materials flowing through a conduit in the flow meter. Exemplary Coriolis flow meters are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,109,524, 4,491,025, and Re. 31,450 all to J. E. Smith et al. These flow meters have one or more conduits of straight or curved configuration. Each conduit configuration in a Coriolis mass flow meter has a set of natural vibration modes, which may be of simple bending, torsional, or coupled type. Each conduit can be driven to oscillate at a preferred mode.
Material flows into the flow meter from a connected pipeline on the inlet side of the flow meter, is directed through the conduit(s), and exits the flow meter through the outlet side of the flow meter. The natural vibration modes of the vibrating, material filled system are defined in part by the combined mass of the conduits and the material flowing within the conduits.
When there is no flow through the flow meter, a driving force applied to the conduit(s) causes all points along the conduit(s) to oscillate with identical phase or small initial fixed phase offset, which can be corrected. As material begins to flow through the flow meter, Coriolis forces cause each point along the conduit(s) to have a different phase. For example, the phase at the inlet end of the flow meter lags the phase at the centralized driver position, while the phase at the outlet leads the phase at the centralized driver position. Pick-off sensors on the conduit(s) produce sinusoidal signals representative of the motion of the conduit(s). Signals output from the pick-off sensors are processed to determine the phase difference between the pick-off sensors. The phase difference between the two or more pick-off sensors is proportional to the mass flow rate of material flowing through the conduit(s).
Meter electronics connected to the driver generates a drive signal to operate the driver and determines a mass flow rate and other properties of a material from signals received from the pick-off sensors. The driver may comprise one of many well known arrangements; however, a magnet and an opposing drive coil has received great success in the flow meter industry. An alternating current is passed to the drive coil for vibrating the conduit(s) at a desired flow tube amplitude and frequency. It is also known in the art to provide the pick-off sensors as a magnet and coil arrangement very similar to the driver arrangement. However, while the driver receives a current which induces a motion, the pick-off sensors can use the motion provided by the driver to induce a voltage. The magnitude of the time delay measured by the pick-off sensors is very small; often measured in nanoseconds. Therefore, it is necessary to have the transducer output be very accurate.
Generally, a Coriolis flow meter can be initially calibrated and a flow calibration factor can be generated. In use, the flow calibration factor can be multiplied by the phase difference measured by the pick-off sensors to generate a mass flow rate. In most situations, once the Coriolis flow meter is initially calibrated, typically by the manufacturer, the meter can provide accurate measurements of the fluid being measured without accounting for variations in fluid properties. Although some prior art meters do provide some compensation for temperature and/or pressure effects, this is mainly to compensate for a change in the flow conduit stiffness. However, it has been determined that in some situations, other fluid properties can produce errors in the mass or volume flow rate output by the meter electronics. The errors are generally greater with higher density fluids, such as, for example, some hydrocarbon fluids. However, depending upon the required meter accuracy, the errors may be experienced with fluids of a variety of densities.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method to detect and compensate for errors in flow rate measurements using a measurable flow parameter. The present invention overcomes this and other problems and an advance in the art is achieved.